This presentation will be made in English. Participants are welcome to join the discussion in Swedish, English, Arabic or French.

Abstract
When patients describe feeling ignored, deprioritized, misunderstood or disrespected by healthcare providers and explain it as discrimination on grounds of appearance, linguistic ability and/or migration status, is this racism? Does the experience of ‘subjective racism’ mean that service providers have been misinterpreted by patients? Is it possible for institutional discrimination to occur in the absence of individual prejudice?

One justification for Medical Humanities is an ability to make sense of ambiguous aspects of healthcare that reductionist medical approaches cannot. When a patient feels belittled by racism, by a provider who cannot imagine being a racist what is the appropriate response?

This presentation outlines the ambiguities of racism in healthcare settings and asks what a critical Medical Humanities approach might offer.

Sarah Hamed, is a doctoral candidate in the Sociology Department. She graduated in dentistry from the University of Malmö and has a Master’s in international health from the Department of Women’s and Children’s Health, Uppsala University. Her Masters research has been published in Qualitative Health Research. She is researching discrimination in the health care system in Sweden.